My FAVORITE wheat beer

Doesn't all beer have yeast?

If we're talking about weissbier / hefeweizen, you should refer to them as either of those names. Hefe is yeast. Weizen is the wheat. Hefeweizen is the German term and Weissbier is the Bavarian dialect for it. Weiss being white as the beer is somewhat white in complexion. blah blah blah. I know. People referring to wheat beers as hefe beers reminds me of the time I went up to a bar in Heidelberg and asked for "Three wiess." I figured, "of course I'm referring to beer. i'm not referring to crayons." Well after a few exchanges, he figured out I wanted Wiessbiers and not Wiess.

ok, enough bitching. Sorry.

Gerald

Maybe we could just lighten up a bit? Randal obviously knows what the hell the beer is. And cross-language beer taxonomy is a muddled mess anyway, particularly in this instance, where the Brothers Widmer have muddied the waters a bit by calling their unfiltered wheat ale a hefeweizen. I often refer to the Bavarian wheats as "hefes" when I'm talking with people who know what one is. We're not in Germany, we're not ordering beers, we're just discussing. No need to be the Beer Police. Oh, and yes, all beer has yeast, but most of it has that yeast filtered out (homebrews being (usually) an obvious exception).

Your story reminds me of going to Wilkes-Barre and ordering the local lager, Stegmaier. We walked into the first bar of the day, Dukey's, and told the tarbender "Three Stegmaiers, please." And the guy says, "Oh, three Stegs? Okay." We felt like we'd somehow screwed up. So when we went to the next place, we bellied up and sang out, "Three Stegs!" And the man behind the stick fixes us with the fish eye, and says, wearily, "You want Stegmaiers?"

Understood. Me too.

I always wondered if just that sort of confusion contributed to the end of the last local brewery (pre-micro era) in nearby Allentown. If you went into a bar and ordered a bottle of their premium beer, "Perfection", they usually didn't have it. If you ordered a "Horlacher", *maybe* you'd get one. If you asked for a "Hor'", they'd point you to the door to upstairs...

Had it. Loved it.